Not Alone
by Amelia Friend
Summary: Sometimes you are lonely. Sometimes you are alone. And sometimes, very occasionally, you are neither. Slight Kat/Callum if you squint.


**This started due to a request by Goldy101 at the start of January (sorry about the long wait), (s)he wanted a Kat/Callum story ****but it somehow morphed into ... this - a musing from Kat's point of view.**

**Just a point that all my Sparticle Mystery stories are set in a slightly AU world - most obviously seen in 'Special' (which no one has reviewed - pretty please - even if it is just to say that you like (or hate, I'm not that fussy) it) - the easiest way to put it, would be to imagine a slight Sparticle Mystery / X-Men crossover, without any of the X-Men characters.  
Of course, you don't need to know that to like the story - and now I'm starting to ramble, so I'll just tie it off and let you get on with the story.**

**This takes place after the Season One finale, when Kat has left the Sparticles.**

**Hope you enjoy, and please, please, pretty please with a cherry on top, review this for me.**

* * *

Fingers flying over yet another keyboard, now sixteen year old Katherine Barker – or Kat to her friends – inputted the shut down code she had long since memorised.  
This was the sixteenth nuclear reactor they had been forced to shut down – and the final still functioning one in the entirety of the UK.

A strand of into her eyes, and she pushed it out of the way, and behind her ears – the brown locks had grown longer in the eighteen months or so since the Disappearance (for that was how it was always referred to now, as a proper noun, with a capital letter, and all the fear and respect it had both earned and deserved), and she considered for a moment taking a pair of scissors to it – for surely short hair was more manageable than long, and in these times, manageable was what everybody, most of all her, needed.

Pulling her orange cardigan closer around her shoulders against an imaginary draught, her fingers caught the slightly bejewelled necklace that she had found in her father's office so long before.  
It had seemed easier, even then.

* * *

"Just a few more minutes, then we can go," A small voice broke her out of her silent reverie, and Kat turned to the origin of the voice, a nine year old little girl named Lucy with hair as brunette as Kat's own, and eyes a pale shade of blue.  
They had met in the Camp (again another proper noun, for it deserved no less), and the small girl had not left her side since then.

At first it had both worried and annoyed Kat in equal measures, what she was doing was neither easy nor fun, it was no place for a little girl, no matter how much they had all been forced to grow up.  
But Lucy proved herself quickly, she hadn't been left alone in the Camp without reason, and found safe paths that Kat would never have though of, always knew where the next station, their next stop was, and her estimates of the radiation in the air around them was, at times, more accurate than the old yellow Geiger counter that Kat had not been able to get rid of.

Kat also would not deny the fact that the small body which lay beside her each night in the tent that she used to share with Reese and Frankie didn't make cold nights and long days, just that little bit easier – that the breathing of another, still innocent, didn't help her remember why she was so far from everything she knew.

* * *

It was harder than she ever thought it would – being away from her friends, those she had begun to call her family – being away from the Sparticles.  
Their names came easily to her head; Sadiq, Tia, Holly, Jordan, Ami, Jeffrey, Liam, Frankie, Reese.  
Callum.

* * *

They had separated somewhat in recent times – Jeffrey and Tia to work at a new CU Clinic, helping as much they could, working entirely out of theory books, for there was no one to teach them the knowledge as it should be taught.

Jordan and Ami were considering moving to the continent – apparently it would be easier over there – but it still seemed as if they were just running away. Kat sighed, how was that any different to what she was doing.

Holly hadn't said anything, but she seemed to be moving further away from the Tribe, distancing herself, and always finding trouble with their plans.

Callum was always moving, he had to – after becoming a Sheriff, he had to follow the trouble – what he had done ever since it started, but now he was on the opposite side.

* * *

The two brunette girls claiming to be sisters sat by the docks, waving away Reuniters and Recruiters (for both Fizzy and CU) and everyone and everything in between.  
They'd be gone soon – continuing their journey first in Europe, then over Asia, then America, or maybe Australasia before then, and they needed to visit Africa and the Arctic, and the Antarctic at some point - though did they even have nuclear power plants.  
Kat wasn't quite sure, but she trusted Lucy to lead them to where they next needed to be.

If they could trust others with this task, it would be so much quicker.

If they could trust others with this task, they may not have to leave England.

Not for the first time, Kat found herself wishing that she was a teleporter – it would make everything so much easier.

* * *

Easier – a simple word to use, one she had been using more and more in the passing months.

Really, she should have had a point of referance to compare their expirances against, before using it so much, but she found she didn't care so much about things like that anymore – not when he held in her hands the key to stopping global destruction, and didn't have a home anymore, nor food nor drink on many a day.

* * *

The faint shadow of a ship made itself known in the distance, and Kat found herself not wanting to leave, but knowing that she must.

She'll be back one day, she told herself – for she had nothing if not hope.

She'll be back one day, once the power stations had been shut down, once she was sure that they weren't going to kill the fragile life just starting to bloom as so many came to grips that maybe... maybe the adults weren't coming home.

And that was only if she didn't die first.

* * *

A year ago, she would have scarcely believed the thoughts now running through her head – but then again, what fourteen year old thinks of dying, and running, and shutting down nuclear reactors before they go into meltdown.

Not a normal one, anyway.

She doesn't suppose she'll ever be that normal girl again, that naïve girl.

Because she was naïve, they all were.

More naive than they ever realised.

* * *

A small hand moulded its way into Kat's, even while the owner's eyes stayed firmly fixed on the slowly solidifying body of the ship in the distance making its way towards them.

* * *

Kat closed her eyes, and thought of times from ages lost, times sat in front of the television on a Saturday evening with her mother and father and her sister, all long gone now.

She thought of an impossible journey undertaken alone, made possible by hope, by story-telling, by kindness, by love.

She thought of her journey, her mission, her destiny, and prayed she would be met with the same.

If Martha Jones could do it in a year, then so could she.

* * *

**Thank you for reading, and please review,  
Mia.**


End file.
